


(When) Innocence is Lost

by Sangerin



Category: Spooks | MI-5
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-02-26
Updated: 2006-02-26
Packaged: 2017-10-19 15:07:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/202192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sangerin/pseuds/Sangerin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was better to keep a wall between you last night, and a city between you today.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(When) Innocence is Lost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [moth2fic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moth2fic/gifts).



> Fic written for [](http://moth2fic.livejournal.com/profile)[**moth2fic**](http://moth2fic.livejournal.com/) in the [Spooks Ficathon](http://community.livejournal.com/spooks_creative/). Title is a misheard Alison Krauss lyric. Many thanks (as always) to [](http://melwil.livejournal.com/profile)[**melwil**](http://melwil.livejournal.com/) for beta-ing.
> 
> Spoilers to 3.5

Saturday morning. The flat is quiet, and there’s an empty bottle on the bench that you didn’t finish. Her door is closed, so she’s at home and still in bed. You put aspirin next to the empty bottle. You dig around in the kitchen and give up: you’ll buy breakfast on your way.

The grid is quiet, too. Jed is on weekend duty, sitting in front of a terminal reading the papers. He waves as you walk in, and you wave back but go straight to the locker room to grab the gear you keep at the office.

You used to run the riverbank with Tom, complaining when he chose the route with the most steps, the steepest hills. You run his favourite route once and then a second time, dodging the rest of the early-morning foot traffic and pushing yourself until all your brain registers is the pain in your lungs and the blood pounding in your temples. You push and push, because otherwise you’ll begin to think of things you want to tell Tom, that you would tell Tom if he was running beside you. And then you’ll start wondering where he is, and it’s better not to do that.

Under the shower you think about Zoe. You sat next to her in that Range Rover yesterday and barely spoke. You sat next to her in the plane and closed your eyes and pretended to sleep. You drove back from the airport and turned a techno station up loud and ignored her winces and left it on even though you actually don’t like techno that much. But it was loud and had an insistent beat, and it kept you awake and kept Zoe from talking. And when you got home you went for a walk and she confronted Will and came home broken. And you slammed the bathroom door in her face and locked yourself away from her all night.

It’s too hard to be around her right now: too many conflicting emotions and thoughts and impulses. How can you comfort her over her break up with Will when you’re secretly overjoyed? But even that joy has a sharp, sour edge, because you don’t want to hurt her. And you know, even though you don’t understand why, that he made her happy. Maybe, though, it’s not for you to judge, and you should just be there for her, whether the times are good or bad, and whether her good and bad times are the same as your good and bad times, or not.

What makes it all so much harder is you thought – until recently – that you were over her. That the brief spark of attraction you’d felt back in training had died a natural death and resurrected as friendship. You’re flatmates and friends and colleagues, and because of the work you do, you don’t have many friends outside the service, and there will always be times when it would be better stay a long way from each other, but you haven’t a choice in the matter and are forced to work together.

So it was better to keep a wall between you last night, and a city between you today. And training distracts you and some target practice will settle you and then you’ll sit down at your desk and write your report to Adam without Zoe sitting nearby in a mood over Will, or worse, artificially cheerful.

The shooting range is silent, like everywhere else. The gun handle is smooth against your palms. You curl the fingers of your left hand around the handle, and slide your right index finger against the trigger. For a while you just hold it, arms straight, aiming at the paper target but with no intention of shooting. Not yet. The target shows a human silhouette. They all do. But it’s hanging on a board twenty meters away, and it’s not an ankle directly in front of you, attached to a living, breathing human being in a drunken sleep because you bought him multiple glasses of whiskey. And even once you put on the earmuffs and load the gun and begin to shoot, the sound of the bullets and the shudder of the gun in your hands can’t erase the imagine in your mind and the feeling that the distance and detachment of shooting would have made it all a lot easier.

You feel like you’ve been blanketed in silence for days. The gunshots bring you out, and when you stop to reload and Colin joins you, his random chatter is almost a relief, as long as he doesn’t expect an answer. You compete with him without really thinking about it, but Colin wins easily.

‘Too bad I’m just technical support, I guess,’ he says. His shots are all at the head, while yours are in the left shoulder. You wonder whether you’re not willing to aim at the head, even a black paper silhouette. So when Colin talks about his friends in special forces, you have nothing to say, because you know now that you wouldn’t wish this on anybody. Not even on Zoe, who by rights – by seniority – should be the one in this position.

Colin goes his own way when you’re done, and you go back to your desk as you said you would, switching on the computer and then sitting staring at your Crystal Palace mug until the bile rises in your throat and you run for the bathroom. You end the day the way you ended yesterday, your stomach empty and throat burning, your legs barely able to hold you up, staring into the mirror and remembering Adam’s words. The water drips off your face, from your nose and chin back into the sink. You brace yourself against the sink and you stare into your own eyes.

Adam says that this means you’ll be all right, but all right doesn’t mean you won’t change. All right doesn’t mean the pictures in your head will ever go away: that you and Zoe can go back to throwing Pringles at each other and teasing her about her blue sweater. All right doesn’t mean you’ll stop describing your own expression as haunted.

Maybe what ‘all right’ means is being as cold as Adam, with a steel spine like Harry’s and no heart at all, like Tessa. And if that’s ‘all right’, maybe you’d rather end up raving like Tom.

Maybe ‘all right’ simply means being able to face tomorrow, and even now you don’t know if you can.


End file.
